


The Sound of Silence

by rohanrider3



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy All Media Types
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Papa Bear Yondu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-02-09 00:09:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 16,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12876018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rohanrider3/pseuds/rohanrider3
Summary: Peter is kidnapped by a mad scientist. When the guardians find him, they discover that in his quest to gather data on a half Celestial, (for SCIENCE), the mad doctor took something from Peter.And they’re not sure if they can ever get it back.





	1. Found

**Author's Note:**

> Rangergirl3 bet me five units I couldn’t write a fic where Peter didn’t say a word.
> 
> Pay up, sister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after my "Four Times" fit, still in my "Very Bad Day" AU. Love you readers!!

Selek, one of his eight legs hunched over the sparking control panel, snarled and dragged the razor-edged tip of his talon another few inches down Peter’s face, scoring a new, deep gash that stopped just over Peter’s swollen left eye. Gamora caught her breath. Peter still hadn’t moved or made a sound. But he’d never stopped looking at her, either.

“Last chance.” the mad scientist hissed. “Let us go. Do it, or he dies!” he snapped. A cold, cruel little smile quirked the corners of his mouth at the look on their faces.

“Eventually, that is.”

Someone gave a guttural growl down at the level of Gamora’s knee, and there was the distinctive _click clack_ of efficiently deadly machinery being readied. Rocket’s voice, when it came, was rasping and dangerous, the words almost unintelligible as they grated out from between bared fangs.

“Let ‘im go.” he snarled. “Or I’ll—“

“Or you’ll what?” Selek mocked, cocking his head. “You’ll shoot me? Blast me to pieces? Then you’ll never get your friend back.” His slit-pupiled eyes shot a quick look down at the bloody figure on the operating table beneath him, then flicked back to them. “What’s left of him, at any rate.” The desperation in the Scythian’s face twisted, something like peevish irritation sliding into it, momentarily crowding out his (completely justified) terror of the ominously looming Guardians only a few steps away from him.

“I knew you’d be like this.” he all but whined. “Everyone always is. Mired in muddy little details. “The hell is wrong with you, Selek? Did you ask the others about this, Selek? Did you tell them what would be involved? Were they still alive when you started the dissection, Selek?”

He shook his head in aggravated disbelief. “Your friend here wouldn’t shut up once I told him my grand scheme. Far too sensitive about my larger plans and—statistically slight— civilian casualties.” he said, aggrieved. Then the smile appeared again, mad and bright and glinting. “But I took care of that annoyance. You’ll thank me for it later, I’m sure.”

Gamora hastily opened her mouth to speak, then saw the madman’s talon quiver a hairsbreadth closer to Peter’s bloodshot eye. Worse, Peter still hadn’t moved. Hadn’t even made a noise. Just stared, stared, stared up at her from where he lay strapped to the travesty of Selek’s operating table, his eyes wide and blank and expressionless. She couldn’t tell much else about him, or how he was doing. From her point of view he was upside down, with Selek standing over him, six of his eight legs poised to flee into the twisting tunnels behind him. The other two were gripping Peter, one taloned claw squeezing round his head, the other clamped firmly on Peter’s bloody waist.

She knew the Scythian was seconds away from disappearing forever into blackness with her friend.

She did not want that.

Gamora closed her mouth, took a deep breath through her nose as she tried to calm herself.

“Let him go and we’ll kill you quickly.” she wanted to say. “Let him go and we won’t put you through half of what you did to him.” But then she heard her own voice come out, low and hard.

“It’s over, Selek. Step away from him and I will do my best not to slowly peel the skin from your bones.”

The scientist giggled.

_Giggled._

He’d abducted Peter from underneath their noses on the pretense of emergency surgery, done gods-knew-what to him for four days— _four days!!!_ —while they’d scoured the galaxy searching under every gods-forsaken rock for the double-crossing, no good son of a bitch, and now he was giggling about making Peter’s worst nightmares about doctors come true.

The bastard was _giggling_.

“—collected _mounds_ of data!” Selek crowed, motioning towards the fitzing monitors and bloody instruments beside him. His reptilian tongue flicked out and along his mouth quickly, an instinctively hungry gesture that was both sickening and distinctly unnerving.

Gamora microscopically readjusted her grip on her sword. Her palms were sweating. That was stupid.

They never sweated. Sweat. Whatever.

No, no, no. Don't take Peter, don’t take Peter. Keep him here. Keep him _here_.

“—might have struck a bargain.” Selek said again, apparently gaining confidence since neither Rocket or Gamora had made a single move forward. He smiled ingratiatingly at them, as if the fact that he’d kidnapped, strapped their friend down, and then treated him as a lab experiment was a minor breach of etiquette. As if attempted vivisection and half-finished lobotomies were regrettable, but forgivable. Like burping after a long pull of booze, or sneezing without turning your head away.

Although granted, Selek’s head was about two feet high and a foot and a half long, and most of it was teeth, and the rest covered with dirty green scales, so honestly a sneeze from him would be akin to going diving in the acid pools on Therbl’s fourth moon.

Oh, gods, she was thinking like Peter.

She couldn’t think like Peter now. She had to get Peter back. Then she could think like Peter—about Peter

**_—oh, gods, oh, gods help her, Peter, Peter was hurt and was probably dying, dying right now in front of—_ **

“—orgive me, but since my experiments are nowhere close to being finished, I’ll just be going.” One large, mold-crusted claw dragged at the restraints at Peter’s sides, starting to saw through rough leather and heavy metal buckles as if they’d been bits of rotten string and old wood. “I’ll take excellent care of your friend, though.”

A smile, all teeth and no sincerity.

“I promise.”

Another roar. This one not from Rocket, but from a tunnel overhead.

“I do not trust your word at ALL!”

Selek’s head shot up and he stared in disbelief at the dark form that had launched itself, twin knives glinting in the dark, at his sizeable head. He snarled, instinctively bringing up one leg—the leg that had been a hairsbreadth away from blinding Peter—to defend himself with.

Which left his underbelly nicely open, to both Rocket’s gun and Gamora’s sword.

Very nicely wide open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yaaaaaay happy holidays to everyone! Except Peter. Sorry Peter.


	2. Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uh-oh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi my lovely readers!! Enjoy!! <3 <3

Everything blurred after that for Gamora. The next thing she knew, she’d dropped her slippery sword and was kneeling at Peter’s head, clumsily trying to wipe thick yellow goo off of Peter’s face. That, and other things.

Who knew Scythians had that many internal organs.

“Peter,” she said, soothingly, trying her best to keep her voice steady and even. Unlike her hands, which were trembling so hard she could barely get a simple wad of sterilizing bandages out of her ever-increasingly large first aid kit.

Stupid, shaking hands.

She needed them to be steady here. She needed them to carefully apply the sterilized bandage to the heavily bleeding wound over his eye. She needed to be strong, and calm, and not let herself collapse into an emotional meltdown (one part frantic relief at having found him, thirteen parts wild hysteria that he was so badly hurt) in the middle of a mad doctor’s underground, unhygenic, experimental laboratory.

“Peter,” she said, soft and careful. “Peter, darling, look at me.” As she said the words, she gently—oh, as gently as she could—pressed the sterilization pad to the heavily bleeding cut over his eye. He had worse wounds—she could dimly hear Rocket swearing as he darted around Peter’s torso, doing triage on some nasty electrical burns—but right now all she could think of was making sure Peter knew he was safe. Rocket had babbled something about making sure Petey didnt’ go inta shock, and had sort of pushed her towards him—but she hadn’t needed his help. She’d had eyes for no one but her lover ever since they’d sliced their way through the countless automatic drones to get to the heart of this place. Peter hadn’t been the only “unique being” Selek had abducted and experimented on.

But he was certainly the only one still breathing.

She said his name again, watching, praying for a reaction.

Nothing.

She bit her lower lip, dabbed at the eye wound again. There. A flicker of movement. Peter’d blinked, his frozen features moving just the tiniest bit.

“Peter?” she said again, hope and fear mixed in her voice. “Peter, hey, it’s okay, it’s me, all right? It’s me, it’s us, we’re here, and we’re going to get you out—it’s all right—it’s me, Gamora—“

As she said her name, he twitched violently, causing the cloth she was holding against his eye to slide off, smearing crimson over his face and onto the dirty leather table he was still—halfway—strapped to.

Then something else happened. Something worse.

Peter’s glazed eyes filled, his bruised face twisted, and he started sobbing.

Silently.

Gamora, fumbling frantically in her belt for another sterilizing bandage, wasn’t sure which was worse. That the man she loved—no—that the man she adored—who was usually so strong and full of life, who hid heartbreak with a smile and his upbeat tunes, who faced up to planetary-scale threats with nothing more up his sleeve than his wits and his friends—that now, now he was so scared and hurt that he was weeping like a badly injured child—

—or—

—or that he was absolutely silent about doing it. His jaw was clenched tight, his eyes squeezed shut, and the thin, tired-looking tears made bloody little rivulets down his dirty face and through the wires and straps holding him down.

She started to say something, but her voice broke halfway through his name.

She wet her lips, tried again.

“Peter, I—it’s all right, I promise, I—“

Her voice trailed off. She’d instinctively reached out for his face, tried to reassure him through touch that she was there and everything would be all right—but stopped, suddenly, her heart growing cold.

Something was missing. Something was very, very wrong.

And something else was there that should not have been.

Her fingers had brushed against something small and sharp and hard embedded halfway up Peter’s neck. She yanked her hand back quickly, but it was too late.

The Kree slave obedience disk activated, dark lines of malevolent electricity branching up and across Peter’s neck and throat, reaching for his brain. Peter’s sobs choked off as his neck arched back and he stiffened, shaking all over, irrythmic jerks and spasms wrenching their way through his already beaten body. Down by his knee, Rocket yelped and then hung on to Pete’s bloody pants leg, as if providing that bit of support would help his friend fight off the evil he’d encountered through Selek’s malicious heartlessness. Gamora bit her lip harder, trying to figure out a viable plan of attack on the obedience disk.

Typically, machines couldn’t be killed. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t _try_.

Drax, meanwhile, had finished ensuring Selek’s demise. The monster’s species was notoriously hard to kill, but you could accomplish it if you had the time and patience and necessary tools to—well.

Dissassemble very large things into very small pieces.

Drax was not patient and he did not have much time.

But he was very good at what he did.

Gamora decided to let him finish that part of their job himself.

As Peter’s spasms subsided, and he sank, shivering, back down onto the table, she turned her attention to the other thing she’d noticed. The thing she’d realized wasn’t there.

Carefully avoiding the obedience disk, she cradled Peter’s still shaking head between her hands. Then she decisively cleared her throat and spoke to her other friend in a strong, steady voice. With Peter like—like that—she was the next best thing to a leader in their scrappy little group. She had to remain calm. As a model, as an anchor point in this hellish storm.

For Peter, obviously.

And for Drax, once he worked through his bloodthirsty momen—um, moments.

And definately for Rocket, who—considering Selek’s lair held pretty much every nightmare he’d ever had about his own imprisonment and experimentation, plus a few more for good measure—was taking this whole mission remarkably well. But doubtless he was putting on a good face for the others. Like she would do—was doing.

Gamora was not going to let a perfectly solvable problem tip over her world.

Or make her lose her ever present facade of calm.

Rocket turned his head, swiveling one ear towards her. “Eh? Whazzat, Gammy?”

Gamora said his name again.

Rocket sighed in exasperation as he finished tying off another sterilizing bandage on the side of Peter’s quivering forearm, and growled as he kicked a rusty, rickety IV stand out and away from Peter’s side.

It tipped over and crashed into the gnarled mess of equipment lying scattered on the ground. Gamora shut her eyes in an almost fruitless attempt to gather her wits and her patience.

When she opened them again, she noticed a table nearby, and on it, a tangled mess of fizzing wires on what looked like the skeletal outline of an evilly glowing helmet. She quickly averted her eyes from that—and the mental nightmares it conjured—as she began to outline was was best to be done.

Rocket put one grimy paw on his hip, jamming one claw into the belt that served him as a holster.

“Gammy, yew gotta stop mumblin. I can’t hear nothing, and that ain’t gonna help me help Petey or you here none.” He shot her a grin that was as false as the cheer in his voice. But it was still her stubborn as nails friend behind the fake, too bright smile. He was there for her, in his own sassy, scrappy little way.

Gamora swallowed over a lump in her throat that she didn’t know she had.

“—lator.”

She realized she was whispering.

Even though that was the case, Rocket’s ears still stood straight up.

“Whadda mean his translator?” he said, his own voice rising to a squeak. “It’s there, ain’t it?!”

Before she knew it, he’d darted over to her side and moved one of her sticky hands away from Peter’s face. He stared at the gaping wound over Peter’s ear for a moment, his small paw resting just for a second on the slick hair surrounding it. Then his large dark eyes met hers.

“Oh. Oh, crap.” Rocket breathed. Gamora nodded miserably.

She couldn’t think of anything else to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's confession: So guess who got crazy sick AND writer's block simultaneously today? *waves hand in air* This author. So I dragged myself to the computer and posted an earlier chapter and am hoping that that elusive GOTG muse hits me on the head again soon. :) 
> 
> Plus it's been too long since I replied to your lovely comments and such--mea culpa, please forgive me! I love you guys!!!


	3. Papa Wolf Protocol

 “—OF A BITCH TORE OUT PETE’S TRANSLATOR, CAPTAIN!”

Rocket winced and waggled a paw in his ear slightly, moving the comms unit just a tad bit away from his ear. Kraglin’s voice tended to jump a few octaves when he got real stressed.

The intermittent snap and crash of battle heightened, then seemed to fade. Something that sang an electronically shrill song of death—Rocket had a pretty good idea what—seemed to pause for just a second. Kraglin cursed, and it sounded like he’d covered his ears (and the comms) with his hand.

Then the sound barrier broke on the other end of the line.

Rocket was very glad Kraglin had had the presence of mind to also lower the volume on the comms.

The sounds of combat on the other end of the line didn’t pause so much as lessened abruptly.

Very abruptly.

A final few explosions marked the demise of Selek’s robot forces. Then an instant’s pause for breath, the air heavy with silent expectation.

“HE DONE WHAT?!!!” Yondu’s voice roared from somewhere on the other end of the line. The sound of stomping boots and crunching metal crackled through the intermittent static, and Rocket ripped his comm out of his ear and, wincing, held it at paw’s length as Pete’s resident Papa Bear hollered his rage through their flimsy connection.

“HE WHAAAT?!! WHAT’D THAT MONSTER DO TO ‘IM?!! WHERE’S MY BOY?!!”

Rocket tried making himself heard over the simultaneous roar of outrage from the rest of Yondu’s Ravagers without snapping his own vocal cords, but it was a close thing.

“I TOLD YA ALREADY!!” He yowled. “PETE DON’T GOT HIS TRANSLATOR NO MORE! DAST KRUTAKER RIPPED IT OUT!!”

Yondu started roaring a curse, but then his voice got all quiet, the deadly, oh-god-oh-god-so-glad-he’s-your-friend-and-not-mad-at-you kind of quiet.

“—sonofabitchScythian. Rocket, where’ you at? We’ll get there jest as fast as we can.”

Rocket swallowed hard, looking around the long, dark room. “Some kind of experimental lab.” he said flatly. He tried hard to keep the slowly rising panic out of his voice. “‘Z big. Probably his biggest one. Lots of computers, hardware, and…uh, other, other stuff.”

Yondu cursed again, but not at him. Nebula’s flat voice cut in through a particularly rough buzz of static.

“That could be anywhere on this cursed planet. The madman’s tunnels are a maze, and our tracking systems aren’t working. They could be anywhere.”

Yondu growled in agreement, and there was another moment of silence as the closest thing the other Guardians had to a grandpa mused. When he spoke again, the Ravager captain’s voice was quiet, but hard.

“How bad’s he hurt?”

Rocket tried not to look up at the operating mirror hanging at a drunken angle over the table Pete was strapped and wired to. He tried not catching Gamora’s eye as she desperately tried to tend a wound—one of the many wounds—her first aid kit didn’t even begin to cover. He tried not to let the glint and gleam of sharp objects—gods so many sharp objects—around them fill him with mindless, screaming fear. He tried.

Didn't mean he succeeded all the way.

“ ‘z bad.” Rocket said, his voice sounding a lot smaller than he would have liked. “I don’t know how bad, exactly, but this Selek guy—“ here Rocket viciously kicked one of Selek’s legs that had rolled over from Drax’s increasing pile—“wasn’t too careful. Petey ain’t…he ain’t good.” Rocket released the comms button for a second, paused, and swallowed. He clicked it on again.

“Petey ain’t talkin, Yondu.”

A low gasp from the rest of the Ravagers. A snarl from Nebula, a blistering oath from Kraglin. Momentary silence from Yondu. Then a tense question.

“You mean he ain’t makin sense? Or he ain’t talkin, period?”

Rocket wretechedly turned back towards Gamora, who’d just finished figuring out a way to murder and then remove Kree obedience disks. He’d known she could do it. Way to go, Gammy.

“He ain’t talkin period.” Rocket said dully into the comms. He took a deep breath and let it out. “I…I think we’re gonna need a medic. Somebody more practiced than yer guys.”

Yondu’s growl was half-questioning, half-defensive. “Why’d ya say that?”

Rocket squeezed his eyes tight shut. Looking at Petey was makin his stomach do flips of sympathetic pain, and he didn’t have the time to dry heave right now.

“The guy went pretty deep when he ripped out the translator, looks like. Looks like he….mmph. Went into his brain.”

“His WHAT?!!!”

“His brain, stupid! The thing in yer head that makes you think! You’d know if you had one!”

“Why yew little—“

Another voice clicked on in on their comms, low and quiet and menacing. “If you don’t mind,” it hissed, “Peter can still hear. I don’t think he understands what’s being said, but he can tell you lot are angry and dangerous and afraid and it’s scaring him. So CUT IT OUT.” A pathetic little whimper from Peter undercut Gamora’s words and silenced them all simultaneously.

A guilty pause filled both the dirty caverns and the blood-speckled laboratory.

“Yes Gammy.” Rocket said into it, at the same time Yondu growled “Got it.” and turned to start issuing orders to his men. It sounded like the Ravagers were going to go find a medic who could deal with something this serious, and simultaneously work on some way to find the small band of Guardians once they got back.

They’d better hurry, Rocket thought as he clipped the comms back onto his ear and scurried towards Gamora and Peter. Something was happening with Petey. And it wasn’t good.

 


	4. A Welcome Interruption

On Xandar, the Winter Festival held in the planet’s most elaborate ballroom took months of planning. The decorations were perfect, the food the best out of seven worlds, and the four musician string quartet playing decorously in the corner were renowned throughout the galaxy for their perfect harmony. Calming classical music drifted above the hum and laughter of a thousand glittering guests.

The scene was perfect.

And Nova Prime wanted to scream.

She was simultaneously bored rigid and worried out of her mind. This annual Winter Festival function of Xandar’s leaders and their entourages was nothing more than a tired formality, an excuse for the rich, wealthy, and powerful to casually brag about their year’s successes and cattily bring up one another’s failings. And as much wild fun as some might find it, she hated it—and had always hated it—with every single fiber of her being.

Pointless small talk indeed.

It wasn’t as if there were a thousand and one other things clamoring for her attention at the moment.

It wasn’t as if Star-Lord had disappeared—again—days ago, and there hadn’t been any news of him aside from intermittent, curse-word filled Ravager reports.

But duties called.

Even the very stupid ones.

She gripped the stem of her champagne glass so hard it creaked, and she forced herself to loosen her hold before it shattered. Bits of glass and splatters of champagne might look nice on the obscenely expensive suit the fat Minister of Finance was wearing, but he might not agree with her.

“—and that’s how I wrecked my tenth yacht.” The red-faced minister finished. He yawned, then belched, only barely managing to make the action marginally socially acceptable by turning his face away from her own at the last possible minute.

Nova Prime grimly eyed her nearly full champagne flute. She seriously considered draining it to the dregs and then stealing an entire tray of full glasses from one of the harried servers scurrying around, but decided against it.

As much as she felt like sneaking back to her office and hiding under her desk to weep with a good bottle of wine, she had to stay here until at least she was able to talk to—

A familiar, dignified figure, weaving its ever-so-polite way through the crowd, nodding at various people he knew and bowing his head to those he did not.

“—Krystian!” she said, not bothering to hide the relief in her voice. She all but dragged her old friend to her side. Turning round, she beckoned politely to one of the servers, but they’d already seen the new arrival and materialized at his side, genie-like, offering a tray filled with bite-size appetizers wrapped in something Star-Lor—Peter—had once excitedly said tasted like “bacon”.

Krystian reached out a thin hand for one of the morsels. “Eleanor, good to see you.”

“You too Krystian, as always.” She lowered her voice. “Any news on our…um, mutual friend?”

Krystian absently fiddled with his—also still mostly full—champagne flute. Like her, he wasn’t enjoying himself at all. He was just far better at hiding the fact.

“No. Unless you count incomprehensible static and screaming Ravagers a type of news.”

Eleanor winced, then sighed. “To be fair, that’s often what a lot of their reports sound like, even on the good days.”

Krystian nodded thoughtfully and opened his mouth to speak. But he never got the chance.

The classical music screeched to a halt as static squealed over the ballroom’s speakers. Someone had hacked into them from outside, and the heavily accented voice yelling her and Krystian’s names belonged to the loudest—and angriest—Ravager of all. As Yondu Udonta roared something about his boy needing their help STAT, Nova Prime felt her feet leave the floor. She looked down to see the almost invisible shimmer of Kraglin’s newfangled beaming rays enveloping her expensive shoes and Krystian’s impeccably polished ones.

To tell the truth, Nova Prime had never been so happy to be (more or less) abducted by pirates.

 


	5. Rage Against the Machine

With difficulty, Rocket resisted the urge to rip the fur off the top of his head.

Well, hell.

As if everything else wasn’t bad enough, some sort of prisoner or lab subject escape prevention protocol had activated. Thin metal strands—more like wires than straps—had snapped out of the table and twisted hard around Peter’s already frozen form, reinforcing the thick leather straps and knotting around the half-undone buckles with a grim strength all their own. Rocket saw the damn things tighten hard around Peter’s body, and his friend’s already bruised skin whitened under their pressure. Rocket swore. He had a pretty good idea what had caused this development.

Problem was he didn’t know how to fix it.

But he would.

He would.

First he’d just have to…

Rocket cursed as he dragged hard at Gammy’s hands, trying desperately to pull her away from Peter.

“Gammy, you gotta stop, whatever you did to that obedience disk made this happen, lemme see what I can do—“

“Rocket, no, no—no, I can’t, I can’t leave him all alone, he hates that, I have to help him, I have to be there—“

Peter’s agonized shriek cut through the room like glass shards shattering out from an explosion. Rocket whipped round, releasing Gammy’s hands, and shot back over to Peter as if his tail was on fire. He jumped up onto the operating table—

_—table, restraints, sharp things, bright lights, blood—_

—NO—

—he was NOT going to have a freaking flashback NOW of all times—

—not when _Petey_ was the one hurt and needing his help—

—not when the straps are hurting _him_ , stabbing at _him_ , winding harder around _him_ —

Rocket shook himself and snapped an order at Gamora’s stiff form.

“Gammy, look, I gotta figure out a way to stop these damn—“ he kicked at one of the twining strands tightening over Peter’s ribs—“things from doin—eh, this. But you gotta figure out a way to signal our position, so Yondu can find us once he’s got Prime and Broker.”

She stared at him, eyes blank and expressionless, just like Petey’s.

Rocket bared his teeth in exasperation. She was no good to Pete like this, not in shock.

“Go build a signal so we can get help.” he said again. Then, when she still didn’t take her eyes off of Peter,

“HURRY **_UP_**!” Rocket hollered.

She blinked, then jumped to her assigned task, hurrying off around the corner to the broken supply cupboard that might have what she needed inside. Rocket breathed a sigh of relief. Things were bad with Petey. But makin Gammy watch them get worse wasn’t going to help anyone. Besides, he had help.

“Drax!!” he shouted. Then, “DRAX!!!!”

Drax threw one last, heavy thing that hit the opposite wall with a thick, sticky sound, then leapt over to them, dark, worried eyes taking in the writhing tendrils squeezing harder over Peter’s chest.

“—help me get these offa him.” Rocket panted, straining with his claws to keep the thin wires from cutting any further into Peter. Drax bared his own teeth and seized fistfuls of the stuff in both his large hands.

“It is my genuine pleasure.” he rumbled, and, with an effort, tore apart a handful of the writhing cords as if it was the stringy candy that one greasy store sold in Knowhere’s market.

The coils did not like that.

More of them hissed out of the table, and the ones already around Peter tightened as if in revenge for their fellows’ demise.

“ _Hurry up Drax_!!” Rocket said, his voice thready and high with panic. “They’re cuttin off his air, he ain’t breathin right!”

Rocket was struck by the sudden realization that Gamora might round the corner again and find Peter irrevocably crushed, bloody, silent, and dead. And that she might go stabby-stabby crazy-farm if that happened. Hell, they’d all probably go nuts if that happened. And then who would take care of Groot and Mantis? Yondu, Nebula, and Kraglin, probably, might even go and make them Junior Ravagers or something. But Yondu and the rest of the Ravagers would probably go stabby stabby crazy if Peter died too. Hell, they might teach Groot and Mantis to be stabby-stabby nut jobs too.

Rocket knew he was mentally deflecting, but the appalling mental images he’d conjured up jerked him out of his panic.

“Drax, I think I got the control panel here, but I can’t break it on my own.” Rocket held out a small black box in one trembling paw. “You gotta—“ he cut off, grunting in pained frustration as a tendril of cords writhed away from the main mass and tried to snatch the small box out of his paw.

Drax grunted back in response, his thick neck muscles cording with the effort. With an effort, the big man reached out and snatched the box out of Rocket’s grip. He crushed it in one big fist, its small wires sparking, the dark plastic snapping as the Destroyer—well. Destroyed it.

The cords went limp, their eerie silver light dying out of them as they slumped down and away from the figure they’d been trying to cocoon.

Rocket allowed himself a brief sigh of relief and began studying the sparking monitors all around them. One thing down. About a million more to go.

Just what the hell had that—that _thing_ —done to his friend?

*                                              *                                                 *

While Rocket stared at the fulsome electronics and swore under his breath, Drax stared down at his other friend.

Peter wasn’t talking.

Peter wasn’t breathing right.

Peter was crying, albeit silently.

Someone was going to pay for doing that to Peter.

Drax twirled his knives absentmindedly, automatically flicking the blood—and worse—off them.

Oh.

Yes.

He’d already killed the thing that had done this to Peter. Knives weren’t the answer now. In fact—

Peter’s vacant eyes had focused, and were looking intently at Drax.

Drax felt a rare smile dawn on his face and he leaned forward eagerly.

“Yes, friend Peter? What do you require?”

Then he realized Peter wasn’t staring at him, but instead was staring—staring very hard—at the knives Drax was holding in his hands. And that the deep furrows of fear suddenly lining Peter’s pale face were not at all reassuring.

Drax quickly sheathed his knives behind his back. He brought his hands back out from behind him, palms empty, fingers stretched wide. He did his best to smile encouragingly.

“It is all right, friend Peter. I am harmless. To you.”

For some strange reason, Peter did not look at all reassured.

“He can’t understand ya, Drax.” Rocket said from his position half-in, half-out of the sparking underbelly of one of the terminals. His striped tail swished agitatedly from side to side as he bent back to his work, and his voice echoed out from the depths of the machinery.

“—dast bastard ripped out his translator. Plus, all that blood and gore and stuff drippin off ya ain’t gonna make Petey feel any—YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!”

Drax ignored Rocket’s yell. It was not as if the small furry mammal had electrocuted himself. In fact, Drax had seen the smoke beginning to billow out from the terminal, and had yanked Rocket out of the way in time to avoid any permanent damage being done to the rodent.

Also, Rocket’s tail made an excellent hand towel.

“AGH, DRAX, LEGGO OF ME! EW, ACK, DISGUSTING, SELEK’S SLIME ’N GUTS!!” Rocket dropped to the ground and began fruitlessly trying to twist his tail back into cleanliness.

“You would have been badly burned if I had not intervened.”

“Yeah, well, wipe yer hands on yerself next time, yew jerk! RUDE.”

Drax studied his own outfit clinically. “I could not. Selek’s remains are still all over my body and pants, and as you know, I do not wear jackets or shirts.”

Rocket rolled his eyes and huffed out an indignant breath, but was already halfway to another terminal.

“Yeah, well, quit distractin me, ya big lummox. Try doin somethin useful besides destroyin, for a change.”

Drax frowned but decided not to object. It seemed to him that Rocket _would_ have been _very_ distracted (and destroyed) if he’d been set on fire by high amounts of electricity, but the rodent was under a lot of stress.

Also, he hadn’t bitten Drax. Which was as close to a “thank you” as he was likely to get.

Drax turned his attention back to Peter.

They’d stopped the coils’s attack on his friend, which was good. But Peter was still caught in another trap. That of nameless agony and fear. Which was not so easily bested. Drax frowned again, but smoothed the expression off his face as he went back to Peter’s side.

He did not want to scare Peter. Again.

He reached out one big hand, and closed his thick fingers around the straps and half-broken buckles still stretched tight over Peter’s chest. Hopefully he could now rip these hateful things off quickly, and Peter would be free, and he’d stop looking so trapped and so scared—

“DON’T TOUCH THOSE!!” Rocket yelled, and Drax only just stopped himself from yanking them off out of pure reflex. He turned a fulminating glare on his smaller friend.

“Why _not_?” He gritted out through clenched teeth.

Rocket bared his own fangs in a mirror expression of frustrated fury.

 _“Becaaaaaause_ I don’t know how all this works yet!” He gestured at the electronic equipment surrounding them. “And I gotta know how it does before I can fix it—I mean screw it up—you know what I mean!”

Drax furrowed his brow as Rocket dove back inside the compartment he’d sprung from, then looked at Peter. Who was staring up at him, eyes empty and afraid.

Drax swallowed. And reached out a hand.

Comfort was not something he was particularly good at.

But that did not mean he could not try.

 


	6. Damage Control

On seeing—again—how badly Peter was hurt, Drax bit his lip, hard, felt his throat close up for some strange, unexplainable reason. He cleared his throat. Once, twice.

“Well, Peter, I see no visible signs of permanent harm.” he said, striving to sound calm, reassuring, rational, the way Hovat would have sounded if she’d been the first to find Peter.

Just because Peter couldn’t understand him didn’t mean he shouldn’t speak to him. Perhaps just the sound of his voice could soothe his friend.

Drax certainly hoped so. He couldn’t come up with as many plans as Peter could, and so far this was the only one he’d been able to think of.  
Peter didn’t seem to hear him. He just whimpered again, the sound thin and broken, and his blank blue eyes, wide with fear and pain, kept roving ceaselessly around the room, skittishly searching for something they could not see. Drax swallowed again. Peter would see clearly again. Could think again. The Broker and Nova Prime could certainly care for him.

He put one large, yellow-stained hand on the undamaged side of Peter’s head, very, very gently. He stroked his thumb back and forth across Peter’s forehead, the gesture soothing and familiar.

“It is all right, my friend. It is all right. You are going to be fine.” he said.

It was not lying if he meant to make it so.

“We are here. And we will take care of you.”

And that last part was definately not a lie.

Peter seemed to know this. He’d stopped shaking, at least a little bit, and his breathing was coming a little easier. But the sight of his white face and wide-stretched, staring eyes still made Drax’s chest twist painfully. And the Destroyer felt all too familiar fires of rage begin to flare up behind his own eyes.

Drax blinked rapidly.

Rocket swore from somewhere in the room, and the coils slumped around the table began to shiver, their strange otherworldly light flickering back to life with a thrum of malevolent energy.

Peter jerked at the sound, swallowed hard again, closed his eyes tight shut as if that would keep the monsters away. He opened his mouth to speak, but no intelligible sound came out. Just an awful, pathetic little whimper.

Then evil little bands of lights, threaded through the straps still twisted around Peter’s wrists and ankles, buzzed back into life, their steady sequence bursting into continuous scarlet brilliance. Their low hum shrilled into an awful shriek, and Drax could only watch, helpless, as his friend’s body stiffened and arched in front of him, Peter’s screams mingling with the alarms until he ran out of breath. But it didn’t end there. The cuffs and straps continued to blaze and the alarms continued to sound until the grey-faced prisoner twisting within them slumped, silent once more, back against the table, his head lolling heavily to one side. Drax ground his teeth until they ached.

Somehow, Selek—he didn’t know how, and frankly, he didn’t care—had modified even the basic restraints for Peter. Rocket’s voice echoed in Drax’s ears about how Selek had taken extra precautions, capturing a half-Celestial.

Drax stared at scarlet lights, now visible, half-hidden in his friend’s temples, a cruel mockery of the headphones Peter so loved to wear. Something dark trickled down from one ear, snaking its way down Peter’s pale neck, and a similar streak of blood dripped down from Peter’s nose.

Drax made an instinctive move towards the hellish lights, ready to rip them out with his bare hands if necessary—but stopped halfway as they flared into brilliant life again. Peter jerked again, soundlessly this time, and bloody tears streaked hopelessly down from between his closed lids.

A ragged, broken little sound—that _never_ should have come from anyone, let alone someone Drax _loved_ —whined its way out of Peter’s throat.

The hard, red mist licking at the edges of Drax’s vision evened out, coloring his world in shades of scarlet.

Almost dispassionately, he turned, flipping one knife so that he held it by its tip.

“Rocket.” he said quietly. Rocket poked his head out of the metal box he was rifling around in. Dark streaks marred the fur around his eyes, and Drax realized with a start that Rocket had been crying.

“I can’t get ‘im out.” Rocket said huskily. “Not by hackin it. It just keeps making things worse.”

Wordlessly, Drax offered him the knife. Rocket bit his lip but accepted the blade, hesitatingly flipping open a cover and studying the wires inside. Peter made that sound again.

Rocket’s paw whitened on the knife’s worn handle.

“ _ **Screw it**_.” he snarled, and stabbed something on the panel so hard that sparks flew up towards the dark and dirty ceiling overhead.

The lights blazed a final, vindictive crimson.

Then finally winked out.  
  
***  
Rocket forced himself to focus, then leapt over the last sizzling computer’s corpse and scampered his way up and then onto the “operating” table, resolutely ignoring the fact that he was in a scene straight out of his nightmares.

Only this was so much worse.

Because it was one of his friends strapped to the table and not him.

Rocket swallowed hard as he studied the myriad straps and buckles and belts and cuffs and every other nasty thing holding his friend down, trapping and preventing him from moving almost at all.

There was something particularly horrible about it being Peter, too. Freedom and Peter went together like music and speakers, or the sun and the stars. He ought never to be tied down like this, a specimen about to be dissected or vivisected whatever the frak it was called.

Not Peter.

Because Peter was special.

And yeah, all of Rocket’s friends were special. But Peter was…Peter. His own unique brand of crazy with a large side of awesome.

Rocket knew this. Even though he’d almost never admit it.

On the good days, Rocket grudgingly called him the leader of their strange little band of misfits. Even on their bad days, Rocket knew, deep and far down, that Peter was, more or less, the heart of their team. Well, him and Groot. Rocket personally thought Groot was cuter, but Peter knew how to talk to people, how to get them to open up or to rethink their positions. One time he’d stopped what could have been a horribly bloody street gang clash in its tracks, just because he’d taken both leaders aside and asked them what their grandmas would have thought. And then there’d been the bar fight in Knowhere where he’d started telling jokes and got the worst rival space-biker gangs in the quadrant to simultaneously groan at his puns. And then to buy each other drinks.

Peter knew how to talk to people. He had the unteachable ability to reach out and touch other people’s hearts with nothing but a few quips and the far stronger appeal from his own, far-too-obvious-for-Rocket’s-taste, big, soft, squishy humie heart.

Petey knew how to _talk_ to _people_.

And the dast bastard Selek had, quite literally, ripped that away from him.

Rocket looked down at Peter, then over at Drax. He swallowed hard. Reached up behind to his own ear and clicked his galactic transmitter/communication device.

“Gammy!” he hissed into it. His first instinct was to scream loud enough so she could have heard him up on the surface of this gorram planet, but given the shivering, shaking form on the table before him, he figured tactful whispering was best at this point in time.

“WHAT?!” Gammora all but shouted over the comms. “I’m making the beacon like you told me to!” Metal clinked and clanged in the background. She must have been taking out her rage and frustration and heartbreak on the machinery.

Rocket winced.

“SHHH!” he snarled at the comms, inadvertently showing more teeth than he’d wanted to.

Peter saw him, and his eyed widened until they showed their whites and he whimpered, trying feebly—and completely ineffectively—to get away. He blinked rapidly, tears continuing to roll down his bloody face. The thin little tracks smeared over older tear marks and dripped forlornly onto the table.

Rocket gulped and instinctively reached out a bruised paw to help him, to wipe those stupid, awful little tears away and reassure his friend that everything was all right.

The way Peter’d helped him all that time ago.

Peter’s blank eyes went wild with fear and he shuddered, shrinking away. As much as he could shrink away, given that he was strapped down to the table by pretty much everything but his ears.

“You should not touch him.” Drax rumbled. “I think he is afraid of you.”

Rocket’s heart hurt. And, for once, not from his cybernetic implants.

Psssht, none of this was fair. Drax was stroking Peter’s head and Peter seemed just fine with that. No, wait, he wasn’t. He was tryin to get away from Drax too, now.

Rocket forced the pain in his chest to fuel the anger in his voice as he hissed vehemently into the comms.

“—finish the beacon STAT! We need Yondu ta get Krystian and Prime here STAT! ASAP! Whatever, real fast!!”

Gamora’s voice trembled a little with weariness and relief. “Just finished. You can update them yoursel—“

“—RODENT!!! WHAT’D THAT THING DO TO MY BOY?!!” a familiar voice hollered in his ear. Peter started to whimper again.

Rocket resisted the urge—again—to claw out his fur. “Real bad.” he whispered again. “And you gotta be QUIET, you MORON, yer’ bein too loud on the comms and you’re scarin him worse!!”

“Can you tell us what is wrong with him?”

That was Mantis. Inwardly, Rocket cursed. He didn’t want to scare the kid. Or Groot, who he would bet his cybernetic spine was cradled right now in her arms like a wide eyed, tearful, sniffling, lil’ humie baby.  
Rocket looked down at Pete again and, for the sake of team morale, tried his best to imitate his sometimes leader and always friend.

He lied.

Like a Parvarian rug.

“Uhhhhhhhh it’s probably, he’s, uh, he’s probably—he’s, he’s, he’s probably—“

“Rocket.”

Gammora, her voice quiet.

Rocket’s ears drooped.

“—t’s bad.” he said in a very small voice. “The dast krutaker ripped out his translation chip. Just tore it out. There’s blood all over, and wires runnin into his brain. And they set up some sorta electricity flargfest that I had to just shut down, cuz we couldn’t touch him without—it—it settin off a seizure—an’ now he’s scared, again—aw, no, aw, gods, Petey—nonono, Petey, don’t—don’t—uh—pleaz don’ _cry_ —”

Rocket swallowed hard again, felt his own voice die away.

For an awful, stunned moment, there was absolute silence on the other end of the line. The Guardians—and their friends—were never that quiet.

But now they were.

Rocket blinked hard, winking hot tears out of his own bloodshot eyes.

“Please—please get here.” he said into his comms, and his voice came out strangely small and fragile. “Please hurry.”

Yondu, the rest of the Ravagers, and an extremely worried Nova Prime and Krystian Broker honed in on Gamora’s signal and made it down to the labs in record time. Not just because they changed their tactics from “destroy remaining robot sentries when necessary” to “utterly obliterate all opposition with extreme predjudice”. And not only because Peter Quill alias Star Lord had been missing for the better part of a week and they’d only just found him.

They did it because Rocket had said please.

Three whole times.


	7. Comfort

Rocket clicked off his comms and stared across Peter at Drax.

“Well, they’ll be here in a few minutes.” he said, finally breaking the shivering silence.

Drax looked down at Peter. “That seems too long.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Rocket muttered.

Drax frowned slightly. “I just di—“ He cleared his throat. “Never mind. Our object should be to reassure our comrade.”

Rocket snuffled and wiped a paw across his muzzle, blinking rapidly.

“Sure. Ya got any bright ideas?”

Drax decided to pass over the luminosity of his thoughts for now, instead focusing on the task at hand. “We should try and get him to breathe evenly, perhaps even to speak.”

“Yeah, well, that last part ain’t happenin, Drax.”

“But it would help Peter to—“

“I KNOW it would help Peter to talk, dumbass! But he can’t. He don’t even understand what we’re sayin.” Rocket looked down at the ugly wound over Peter’s ear, half-covered by Gamora’s pitiable bandage.

Drax pressed his point, worry and fear hardening his tone. “But can he not say anything to us? On his own?”

“No, Drax.” That was Gamora, eyes dull and lifeless. She’d come back and looked like she was resisting the urge to sob and then bury her head in Peter’s chest. Or scream and then bury her sword in what was left of Selek’s eyes.

Drax’s frown deepened. “But perhaps Peter can understand us all the same, even if he is unable to communicate with us.” He turned his head slightly, addressing the bloody form beneath them.

“Peter, can you hear me? If you can, just nod once if you are all right.”

Drax looked up at Gamora and Rocket, his eyes bright with hope and relief. “See? He is nodding! He can understand us!”

“No, Drax.” Gamora said again, in that flat, dead voice. “He’s just trying to get away. See?”

“Oh. Rocket is right, then. He cannot understand us, and cannot say anything himself.”

“That’s what I’ve been tryin ta tell ya, ya big dumba—“

“Enough!” Gamora snapped, a spark of her old fire momentarily flaring into life behind her eyes. “He can’t do any of those things, but he might be able to understand our intentions nonetheless. If we can get Mantis down here, she might be able to get through to him.”

“That’ll be pretty intense for the kid.” Rocket pointed out. There was an unhappy pause.

“She is strong.” Drax rumbled. “And Peter is in great pain and need.”

But Peter was in greater pain and need than they knew.

His friends only noticed when his frantic attempts to free himself jerked to a stop. He stiffened abruptly and his pupils dilated, rapidly expanding until his eyes were dark instead of light. Terror shone bright in them, and his already hitching breaths began to wheeze even more raggedly.

“Drax, what’s happening?!” Rocket shouted.

“Panic is attacking him.” Drax said grimly. “This has been too much for him to handle. It is a wonder terror did not claim him before.”

Rocket twisted his paws together anxiously, but Gamora just looked to Drax, her expression curiously fragile and bird-like. Drax reminded himself Gamora was far more practiced in giving harm or taking punishment herself—but that actually aiding others was still fairly new to her.

Especially when the hurt one was Peter. That seemed to greatly disturb her usually steady equilibrium.

Not that he could blame her. It had been the same with his Hovat. If his wife had so much as pulled a muscle, he’d felt his own balance shift.

Their souls had been one.

And after she died, his own world had gone dark.

But Peter would not die. _That_ spark would _not_ leave _this_ world.

Drax would not _allow_ it.

 

****  
Rocket watched Drax put one big hand gently on Peter’s chest. Peter’s eyes widened and his breathing hitched worse.

“Breathe.” Drax ordered, his usually stern voice even, but gentle. There was just the hint of a tremble in it somewhere, but Rocket was too grateful that Drax’s fatherly skills had found a great use to realize exactly how hard Drax was trying not to cry.

“Breathe…” Drax repeated, and demonstrated taking in a slow, steady breath, gradually raising his hand’s light pressure on Peter’s sternum. He repeated the instruction a few more times, timing his own breaths so that they were in sync with Peter’s own.

Whatever Drax was doin, it seemed to be working. While Peter’s breaths weren’t exactly steady, they did become deeper, and Drax’s stolid presence seemed to be helping Gamora too. She knelt by Peter’s head, carefully holding his face in her hands, her forehead pressed to his, and was humming tunelessly. So far she was the only one Pete hadn’t really tried to get away from, and Rocket prayed to every deity he’d heard of that Pete’s uneasy calm could continue.

Meanwhile, he would do what he did best. Gritting his teeth, Rocket headed back into the still slightly smoking wires curling out of the nearest computer terminal.

He’d figure out what that Selek thing had done to his friend, even if he shocked every last cell in his cybernetic body doing it.

_Ow._

This was for Petey.

_Ow!_

This was for Petey, and Gammy, and Drax and Mantis and Groo—

**_OW!!!_ **

Rocket hissed out a breath and bit the side of his tongue to keep from screaming, just the way he had back when he’d been the one on that other operating table, long, long ago. Didn’t want to scare Petey.

Couldn’t scare Petey.

Man, this was gonna take awhile.

*                                                    *                                          *

Gamora was on her third wavery rendition of “C-come and g—g—get your l—l—love—” when an animalistic shriek nearly made her jump out of her skin. She whipped her head around and stared at the wailing terminal box a few feet away from her. Between her palms, Peter’s face twisted up again.

“Rocket!” she cried. “What the krutack's the matter with—“

She stopped as soon as she saw the burned and smoking figure jerkily crawl out of the terminal. Instinctively, she began to move towards him, but stopped when she saw Drax leap over to their smaller friend’s side and pick him up.

Gamora bit her lip. She’d almost screamed at Rocket again for scaring Peter, electrical burns be damned. It didn’t even have to be at Rocket, she just wanted to scream, to scream and shriek until her voice tore into strips, pouring all the pain and fear she felt into sound so it could finally escape her body.

But she couldn’t.

It would scare Peter.

But Rocket had scared him—oh, and Peter’d _just_ started to drift off, his bruised eyes fluttering shut—but Rocket’s shriek of—pain? panic?—had set him off again, straining and jerking to break free of the restraints, his motions pitifully slow and tortured. His strength was almost gone, now, drained away by the pain and the fear and the terror.

Gamora tried to simultaneously soothe him and get a better look at what had happened to Rocket.

“Shhh, sshhh, it’s all right, Peter, Peter, darling, no one here is going to hurt you,” she said, for what felt like the thousandth time.

But Peter didn’t answer her.

They should have gotten here sooner.

She should have known something was wrong when they’d gone to that “doctor” in Knowhere, four days before. She should have known Selek wasn’t to be trusted. She should have looked longer, found someone else to go to. Even though Peter had been so awfully sick. And also had been his usual “ _cough-cough_ I’ll be fine, Gammy, I hate doctors, you know that, doctors me no likey _cough cough hack hack run a ridiculously high temperature_ ” stubborn, dangerously sick human self.

It was her fault.

Hers.

But what was Rocket howling about? Fault? His fault? How could it be his fault?

Gamora wearily lifted her head and stared at her small friend. He was curled around himself—Gamora dimly noted his badly burned forepaws—and was sobbing angrily into Drax’s chest. His voice—ragged and weary and heartsick—made its way to her ears.

“—coils were tryin ta put back the data, the info Selek gathered outta Pete’s mind.” Rocket sobbed brokenly. “I saw it all in that dast terminal just now. We ruined em, we broke em. I b—“ his voice cracked—“I—I—I b-b-b-roke Petey’s b-b-brain.”

With an awkward half jump, half fall, Rocket wrenched himself out of Drax’s nerveless hands. The Destroyer was staring off into the distance, expression blank.

“I crushed the controls.” He said, voice hollow and lost.

“I told ya to.” Rocket sobbed. He’d pulled himself painfully up to Peter’s side and looked miserably at his friend’s bloody face.

Something broke then in Rocket, and he let out an awful little cry that was all the worse for being so soft. His shoulders dropped and his head bowed, and he half-fell, half-collapsed into the wires and straps covering Peter’s heart. Peter didn’t look down. Didn’t look at any of them. Just continued to stare, stare, stare at the ceiling above them, blue eyes blank and remote.

“I’m so….so….s-s-sorry, Petey,” Rocket sobbed. His own scarred paws clutched at the ragged remains of Peter’s collar, and he buried his little muzzle into Peter’s bloody chest.

Gamora’s own vision wavered and she nearly fell. Her own mind blanked out.

Drax was as still as a statue.

Gamora’s brain didn’t start registering anything again until a familiar red coat appeared in front of her face and a rough voice growled,

“Whatsa matter wit’ you, girl?”

Red eyes appeared in front of hers, but the tone was far gentler than the words used. She felt a callused hand steady her shoulder and another one gently tip her chin up.

There were other voices too.

Familiar ones. Angry ones.

“What’s made em all stop talkin, Captain? They ain’t never not talkin, so why ain’t they talkin—?!—“

“Tryin to figure that out, Beyren, ya dast krutak—” Yondu gritted. A graceful woman clad in a silver party dress shot him an admonishing look. Yondu changed his word mid-sentence.

“Er, Broker’s workin on it, soo, pretty, pretty please, shut yer own yap, Beyren.”

There was the sound of other voices buzzing, equipment being brought in and set up.

“Whar’s the villian what did this!?!” Gamora heard Tulk’s bloodthirsty burr somewhere off to her left. “I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him and disintegrate him, then burn the ashes and then I’ll—“

“He’s there.” Gamora heard herself say, in a remote and faint little voice. “And there. There, there, and there, too. Everywhere, really. Mostly there, though.” A trembling hand pointed at a dark corner. Oh, the hand was hers. When had she moved her hand?

Yondu’s frowning face swam in front of her eyes, wrinkled blue forehead furrowed and scarlet eyes dark with worry.

“Drax was very thorough.” Gamora explained, still staring into the middle distance.

Yondu blew out a weary breath. “Keep followin their orders.” he said to his crew, jerking his head back at the Broker and Nova Prime, both of whom were ordering the unpacking of pristine white boxes, all of which bore the crest of Xandar’s highest medical facility.

Even through the haze of shock, Gamora noticed Yondu never left her side.

And his scarred blue hand never left its place over Peter’s heart, either.

***

Observing the scene before her, Nebula frowned.

Her own head had started to ache, her cybernetic eye dilating painfully at the sight of the evil blinking little lights gleaming out of Pete— _Gamora’s thief’s_ head, and she sternly told herself to stop it. This was no time to be crippled by useless emotions.

“Don’t try to get him out.” she said flatly. The figures grouped around the table looked at her. Gamora was still silent, Yondu too. The big one, Drax, stopped repeating his friend’s name and turned halfway round, shooting her a look that was half anger, half worry. He’d rested one yellow-encrusted hand on the pale head beneath him, the gesture surprisingly soothing and gentle.

Not that you could tell that from looking at Quill.

Staring, staring, _staring_ up at _nothing_ through unseeing eyes, his expression frozen forever into one last, dreadful mask of blank, agonized surprise.

Gamora did not like this. She was all quiet and remote and distant.

Well.

More so than usual.

_Damn emotions._

Nebula repeated her warning, then remembered to explain. “I’ve seen these before.” She stubbornly shoved away the memory of _where_ she’d seen them before and continued. “We can’t just pull them out, or shut off the feed. Well, we could, but then, uh…” she stumbled a little over her words. “Bad things would happen.” she finished uncertainly.

Rocket gave a little whine and Yondu went pale. Gamora said nothing, still stroking Peter’s bloody hair with one nerveless hand.

Drax looked down at Quill’s grey, immobile face, at those awful eyes, then shot her another look, this one less angry, more helpless. “But we must free him from this with all haste.” he said curtly. His tone changed, sounding almost bewildered. “But I do not see how.”

Nebula grimaced again and took two swift steps, striding up the stairs so that she stood level with Drax and the rest of them. With only the briefest hesitation, she looked down.  
Finally got a really good look at Quill.

Yes. Just as she’d feared. Quill—well, what still passed as Quill—was there. So that was good. They’d found his body, at least. They could probably get his mind back. Later. Most likely. If the scientist had had backup disks, or something. Since the Guardians’ firefight or some sort of damage had apparently all but destroyed the first set of monitors. Um. Bad, this was bad. Quill was quiet, but he was still hurting. She knew it. She could see it. And, what’s more she knew it on a level as deep as her bones. It’d been like that for her too, after Thanos’ surger—

She was not good at this.

Focus, Nebula.

Focus on the present.

Focus on the problem at hand.

Get Quill’s brain back. Who could do that. Not her. Not Drax. Gamorra was moments away from going into a total catatonic state, Yondu couldn’t perform brain surgery and would most likely yaka-arrow-incinerate the machines that had done this to his boy before his reason could set in, and the rest of the Ravagers were still trying to unpack medical equipment to save Quill’s life. And the Broker and Nova Prime were trying to make sure the bunch of well-meaning, clumsy idiots—except for Kraglin, who was a _very_ capable and clever comrade—didn’t break anything.

They had to save the information from Quill’s brain.

But who coul—

Rocket.

Rocket could do it.

But Rocket was still there on Quill’s chest, not looking at her. Not looking at anything, really. He was more curled up in a ball, claws clutching Quill’s shoulders as he cried into Quill’s neck. She could see old red welts on his wrists where similar laser restraints had burned their cruel memory deep under his fur.

Nebula forced her own scarred spine to stiffen.

“Rocket.” she snapped. “We need to find and clone the memory core, quickly. Can you do it?”

Rocket lifted bloodshot eyes to hers. His fur was mussed and his eyes were wide with anguish and loss.

“Wouldn’t do no good.” he rasped, his voice breaking. “I—I m-m-made a m-mistake. The wires were, were hurtin him—“

Yondu’s fingers stiffened momentarily over Peter’s heart, then relaxed again.

“—an-an-and I st-st-stopped em. But it burned—burned—burned out the info when I did.”

He jerked his head at the screens surrounding them. The numbers were low, the sensors flat and sounding a low, dull tone. Rocket shuddered, gulped again, and burrowed his muzzle back into the still form beneath him, whimpering something that sounded like “sorry”.

Beside her, Nebula felt Drax stiffen. “You are wrong, friend Rocket. Peter’s brain is still in his head.” He shifted, looking quickly around. All the while, his hand never left off stroking Peter’s head.

“At least, it is not in a jar.” Drax announced. Gamora shuddered, and

Nebula saw Yondu’s lips momentarily peel back, revealing his teeth. She herself fought back the urge to punch the oblivious Drax in the gut and then start flipping tables and smashing monitors in pure, incandescent, screaming rage. She gritted her teeth and spat out her next words instead.

“They were experimenting on his brain using _electricity_ , Drax. Transferred everything in it to those computers, looks like.”

Drax’s face darkened, but he continued to gently stroke Peter’s head, carefully avoiding the still dully pulsing lights. His voice, when it came, sounded simultaneously enraged and bewildered. “But why would Selek _do_ such a thing?”

Nebula felt her mouth twist in distaste at the thought. “Probably because he’s half Celestial.” She hardened her tone, directing it at Rocket. “ _Which means he wouldn’t have risked losing that data_.” she emphasized. _“He would back it up. We can still get it back into Peter.”_

Rocket raised his head at that, sniffing still. But the fire was back in his eyes. He snurked and wiped a bloody paw across his muzzle, expression clearing. He tightened his jaw, turned, and leapt for the nearest monitor, careful to avoid the sparking lights still bursting erratically out from the shattered monitors.

He spat on his burned paws and shouted at Kraglin to come over and help.

Nebula lingered near Quill a moment more, but it seemed like things were—well. Going as well as could be expected. And there wasn’t much comfort she could offer, besides maybe patting Quill’s hand. Which would be stupid. There were wires and straps all over it, and the skin was raw and chafed from his previous efforts to get free.

Touching it would just hurt him more.

Oh, she was _useless_ at this sort of thing.

Maybe Kraglin could use a (cybernetic) hand.

She’d go see.


	8. Evil Voice Activated Siri

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long my friends! Real life got insane for awhile. But I''m baaaack....so now, enjoy the story!

It was Kraglin who accidentally activated the video log.

Everything had been going (relatively) well. Nova Prime was going through their first grade medical supplies (acquired at ridiculous speed and ludicrously low pricing) and charging up what what looked like an array of crystals. Broker had just dragged Tullk over to a table and started drawing out a rough diagram showing energy flow to and from the monitors, and Kraglin and Rocket had just figured out how to transfer the backup information held in the furthest reaches of Selek’s database.

Then two of Kraglin’s dirty fingers brushed against a half-mashed switch, and the damaged monitors in the room crackled to life.

And a voice came in over the speakers.

Not the one they loved.

The other voice. The bad one.

It crackled and burst though the half-ruined screens, but Selek’s voice was cuttingly clear over the sound of Peter’s low moaning in the background.

“—now that’s finished, since your opinions will not be needed or required.”

Something—Kraglin hated to think what—small and metallic bounced away with a forlorn clang. Selek continued speaking.

“However, I also can’t have your thoughts interfere with my scans.”  
In the fizzing foreground of the nearest screen, Kraglin saw a grainy image of Peter, wearily lifting his bloody head up just enough to see what Selek was doing. Then his voice pitched up an octave in pure terror.

“Nnnnnngghh!” Peter’d howled, and thrashed uselessly as Selek neared him. “NGGGH!! Nnnggggggh—“

Selek smiled, ignoring his cries, and, with brutal efficiency, tipped Peter’s head back, forced his mouth open, and smoothly inserted some type of device in between Peter’s teeth. The thing—which looked like some kind of splint—stifled Peter’s screams while still allowing him to breathe. Its unknown purpose crystalized as Selek reached back and flipped one of the hard, silver switches with one jagged claw.

Peter’s already bruised back arched back into a bow as the current surged through him, his body bucking and twisting with the force of the power raging through him. If he hadn’t been strapped down, he probably would have fallen onto the floor. If he hadn’t had the splint in, he probably would have bit through his tongue.

Peter wasn’t able to properly scream.

But that didn’t keep him from trying.

Kraglin didn't know which was worse, the fact that Pete literally couldn’t scream, or that throughout the whole procedure Selek had been there, his clawed hand tipping Peter’s chin back and up in the mockery of a caring cradle.

“There, there.” the thing had crooned. It smiled, showing every tooth in its head. “Just relax.”

Peter screamed again through the guard, but the sound of his voice was lost in the static buzzing of the electricity and the aborted thrashing of his limbs.

After a while, he stopped fighting.

Or the machine stopped pumping volts into his system.

Either way he was still, even the last twitches and spasmodic jerks giving way to limp, heavy silence.

Either way Pete was still.

Except for his eyes.

Bleary and blurred with pain, they were, somehow, still open. And hazily trying to follow Selek’s progress around the room. They watched Selek scowl at one of the monitors, then widened as the evil scientist reached into a nearby drawer and turned around. The shiny smile on Selek’s face almost matched the tiny little scalpel he held in one clawed hand.

“I figured out the problem.” he’d purred. “You talk—no, think—well, both—far too much. I think a little more work is required.”

Peter’d tried to scream again and jerked at that, the image going choppy and blurry as Selek’s form advanced.

It reached out a claw, its ruthless edges descending to clamp a familiar looking wire helmet down hard on Peter’s already bloody head.

Thankfully the video feed shorted out at this point, skipping forward minutes, then hours, then days.

But then it turned back on.

“Now that this is working,” Selek said, turning to smile brightly at the camera, “the subject will be forever trapped in his own mind and pain. It’s a self-feeding loop, if you will.” One of the claws not holding Peter down gestured to some other instruments on a nearby table. “And now that I have some information on his mind, I can what this one’s insides look like.” He mused. “Thing is, I’ve never seen a human heart befo—“

Then there was an ear-shattering explosion, and alarms began to sound. Selek swore colorfully and the audio clicked off. Kraglin caught a sideways glimpse of a bloodthirsty Gamora and trigger-happy Rocket step into view.

Then, thankfully, the video feed—and the audio—shorted out completely.

Kraglin shook himself out of his horrified trance back into the gritty present. Rocket was dry heaving behind the nearest monitor, there’d been an influx of swearing from the Ravagers, and an oath so blistering from Yondu it was a wonder it didn’t leave a hole in the grimy ceiling.

Even Nova Prime was swearing. “Clearly this—“ she used several nouns Kraglin didn’t know, and kicked irritably at another one of the limbs that kept rolling off of Drax’s large pile—“—wasn’t particularly careful with his methods.”

She kicked the limb again, then visibly forced herself to relax.

“Krystian,” she said, voice firm once again, “how should we proceed?”

Her old friend frowned, not at her, but at the diagram he and Tullk had hastily put together of the laboratory’s surviving mechanics.

“Well, the good news is that almost none of Selek’s technology is currently working.” he said. “The bad news is…almost none of Selek’s technology is currently working.”

“Why is that bad news.” Drax asked, voice flat with disbelief. The Broker sighed and rubbed at his ridged forehead.

“Star-Lor—Peter is stuck in what I can only describe as a semi-catatonic state.” he said, clearly keeping his voice level with an effort.

“Say it in plain words for us idjit Captains over here.” Yondu growled.

“Please,” he added, after a look from Nova Prime.

Krystian Broker frowned, rubbing at his forehead again. “The patien—ehm, Peter’s— brain is currently….stuck. It can’t take in any new information, and can’t use any of the information he previously knew. It’s essentially…well, frozen.”

“Like a gun that’s jammed.” Rocket put in, questioningly. Krystian winced at the inelegance of the analogy but nodded. Everyone (except Drax) nodded. (As for his part, Drax just decided to keep silent and keep stroking Peter’s head. It did not matter if he did not entirely understand the analogy. The others understood, and that was enough. They would all help Peter. That was the point of having a family. Everyone would help.)

“We’ll have to separate him from what’s left of Selek’s technology.” Nova Prime added. “Then we’ll have to get him to sleep…”

She sighed and shot an angry glance at the broken, dirty IV currently lying on the floor some distance away. “From what I can gather, I don’t think Peter has been allowed to sleep or rest ever since he was captured.”

The horror of that statement hit them all hard. Gamora froze, then hummed a little more emphatically. Drax stroked Peter’s forehead a little harder. Rocket swore and twisted wires a little faster, and Yondu let out another whispered curse that should have torn holes in the room’s dirty walls. Nebula and Kraglin exchanged looks, and Kraglin shook his head just a little. Nebula unfisted her glowing cybernetic hand and inched it carefully away from a bunch of wires, just to be safe.

Just then, a crackling little voice broke in over the comms.

“Can Groot and I come in yet?” Mantis asked plaintively.

“NO!!” everyone in the room—except Peter—shouted. “STAY IN THE SHIP!!”

“Oh.” Mantis sounded disappointed. Groot’s explosive “I am GROOOT?!” conveyed the absolute indignation the little tree felt without any need for Rocket (or Mantis’) translation.

The intercom clicked off, but then clicked on again. “But we want to help.” Mantis said, her voice trembling with both fear and determination. “Yondu said Gamora said we would be able to help Peter. But we’re not doing anything, and Peter’s still—still hurting.”

Gamora swallowed back a shriek of anger born of worry. Peter was so much worse than they’d thought. Exposing Mantis to that kind of trauma (not to mention Groot) would be—would be—

 _Par for the course?_ Part of her mind suggested.

 _The very LAST resort._ The rest of her insisted.

She turned her attention back to the discussion going on, which had to do with how, exactly, to first separate Peter from the hold Selek’s technology had on him—and then how to get Peter to sleep with the limited resources they had.

“—we’ll separate him first, then get him to sleep. After all that we’ll take care of the literal brain surgery.” Nova Prime said. Looking round at the dirty laboratory, her even voice hardened a bit.

“We’ll get him back to Xandar for that.” she said, frost icing each of her words. Without looking, she kicked one of Selek’s legs away from Peter with the tip of one elegant shoe.

“Where we can properly take care of him.” she finished.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S. I love you guys!


	9. Not Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm allliiiive! Thank you all so much for your kind words and patience--I will try and answer every comment just as soon as I can!

Yondu furrowed his brow, never once taking his hand away from where it lay on Peter’s chest. He had to reassure himself his son’s heart was still beating, still keeping rhythm with his boy’s ragged breaths and pumping the blood through his son’s battered body.

He swallowed hard again, forced himself to listen to Prime and Broker’s plan. Prime was showing them the crystals she’d been charging.

“Each one of us will take one,” she said. In one hand, she held out one of the small, glowing blue shards. It fit neatly into her small palm. “I managed to match the frequency of that —“ she shuddered “—helmet, and I have a plan.”

She cleared her throat slightly. “In short, we have to use what’s left of Selek’s machinery to transfer Peter’s—um, mind—back to him. But,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the almost instant hum of protest—“we’ll be the conduit.”

“I am Groot?” asked a little voice over the intercom. Prime elaborated.

“We’ll activate Selek’s machinery and transfer the information back to Peter’s mind, but we’ll take away the pain on its way back to him.”

“So he won’t feel nothin?” Yondu pressed. Both Prime and the Broker saw through the double negative and nodded emphatically. Broker took over for Prime, tapping one of the crystals he held in his own hand and holding out a small box filled to the brim with the sparkling objects.

“These will, ah, disperse the pain between us before it reaches Peter.” he said, a note of grimmness in his voice. “Our relative discomfort should be manageable.”

His white eyebrows jumped as all of the Guardians and Ravagers stuck out their hands, grabbing and snatching at the crystals as if they were children and the crystals candy. After some scolding and swatting hands away—courtesy of Yondu— _“Rockit, if u take more than three agin, I’m gunna pull yer tail out myself and that’s a promise”—_

Broker looked down at the (now empty) box and continued. “Peter will, however, need to wear that helmet again. It won’t hurt him this time, but I am glad he’s, ah, not quite cognizant of what’s going on. Beyren, if you would be so kind as to hand it to me, please. Udonta, if you could move just slightly to the side so I can—oh.”

Peter was, in point of fact, cognizant enough to realize what was going on.

And trying to fight again.

Catching sight of Peter’s desperate eyes and terror-filled face, the Broker’s usual calm demeanor cracked for a second. Surprisingly enough, Yondu took over, turning Peter’s chin away from the Broker, towards himself, and speaking calmly, but authoritatively.

“Now look here, son—naw, naw, yew don’ need to look over there. Yew just keep lookin right at me, all righ? Nope, nope, here, with me. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah, yeah, yer fightin, and fightin hard. Yer makin yer crew proud, boyo, right proud an’ that’s a fact. There’s never been a Ravager—eh, Guardian—as plucky as you. You don’ got a chance in a thousand, but yer not givin up all the same. Real proud, Peter, we’re all—hem, we’re all real proud. Jest—jest let us help you now, though, yeah?”

Peter made his disagreement known by feebly trying to headbutt his would-be comforter, but Yondu easily dodged the attempted blow and kept talking.

“Yer makin us proud, Pete, but now’s not the time to be fightin, boyo. Yer family’s here, and we’re not gunna let nuthin—an’ I mean nuthin—happen ta ya. Ya have my word on that.” He nodded towards the flames on his worn coat. “I swear that by the flames. You hear that? By the flames.”

“Helmet in place.” Broker called.

“Everyone get ready.” Nova Prime ordered. Then she flipped the switch.

*                                                 *                                           *  
The pain took Gamora’s breath away. Once, on a mission for Thanos, down on the freezing planet of Seth, she’d broken her collarbone in a near fatal crash landing.

The worst thing hadn’t been the pain, exactly. Certainly, breaking what some argued to be the most painful bone possible to break hadn’t been a fun experience. And it had been incredibly painful.

But it was the solitude. The cold, dull pain of bearing deep wounds alone, with no aid or comfort offered or near at hand.

It was being alone more than anything else that hurt the worst.

That was the pain she was feeling now.

Her vision grew blurry for a moment, and she found she was holding her breath. Then she heard the whine of small gears and felt the strong grip of a cybernetic hand on her shoulder, and her vision cleared enough to see Nebula’s uncertain face above her.

And to notice that Nebula held three crystals tight in one shaking hand.

Gamora shook her head slowly, reached out and tried drawing two of the crystals out of her sister’s hand. Nebula frowned and drew her hand away, but Gamora persisted, reaching out further until the tips of her fingers brushed the glowing edges. Beneath them, Peter stirred restlessly, still fuzzily trying to shake the helmet off his head.

They both paused at that. Then Gamora plucked one of the crystals out of Nebula’s hand. Nebula glowered but let her do it.

The sick, dull agony threatened to overwhelm her again, but she closed her mind to the possibility of giving up, gritted her teeth, and hung on.

Then she felt them.

The others.

They were with her. She sensed Drax’s firm strength and Rocket’s quick mind, felt, coming from the ship, Groot’s large heart and Mantis’ deep empathy. Yondu’s fierce protectiveness and Kraglin’s scrappiness, Nebula’s bone-deep stubbornness, Beyren’s care and Tullk’s rough concern, Krystian Broker’s clear mind—the other Ravagers, each an individual flame linked to her by an inexplainable yet unbreakable bond. Around all of them, Nova Prime’s calm control glowed, an even, blue-white flame that acknowledged and wound round Yondu Udonta’s blazing red spark.

Together, they encircled the flickering spark that was Peter, reached out to the thread of thorns that had encircled his mind, and together they encouraged him to come back—and more importantly, to stay.

And it worked.

Slowly, painfully, torturously.

But it worked.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! This is just about it--the next chapter is a very brief Epilogue, of sorts. Enjoy!


	10. Epilogue, or: Time for an Ass-Kicking

“Yondu!” squeaked Mantis’ voice over the comms. Yondu raised his head from where it was bowed over Peter and squinted blearily in the direction of the ship. Wearily, he tapped his own comms unit.

“Wha’ is it, lil’ one?”

“Robots! Lots and lots of robots! They’re activing—oh, I do not know how many! But they powering up from all all over the base, and they are coming for you!!”

“I thought we killed all those fu—uh—furious things when we got here.” Kraglin growled, only just remembering who was on the other end of their comms line.

“They only just activated!” Mantis all but shrieked. “I am GROOT!” yowled a little voice.

“I know our friends are all very good fighters, but there are a **lot** of a _lot_ of robots!” Mantis screamed back. “And I am afraid they won’t be able to—you are all surrounded! Yondu, what are you going to do?!!!”

Yondu looked down at his son’s—finally—peaceful face. And looked grimly round at his Ravagers, allies, and the rest of his kids.

“Whatever yew do,” he warned, “do not wake him up.”

Heads nodded. Claws and fingers and multiple limbs clicked the silencers on their weapons to “on”.

As it turned out, they were outnumbered three to one, outgunned, and completely surrounded.

And those poor robot bastards never stood a chance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it is! Sorry for my very long absence...real life came along and sort of kicked me around for a few months. Pretty badly. Long and short of it is I'm still deep in recovery mode, and can use all the prayers/good vibes/internet hugs I can get. Love you readers! You are all a bright light in a dark time. Hugs!! *Ravager salute*


	11. Personal Update/Frankly Kind Of A Desperate Plea for Community

Hey guys! Just what it says on the tin--a bit of a personal update/request for you readers. *Warning: Some heavy stuff addressed here--PTSD and past childhood trauma*

First thing--good news, I'm working on another fic! It's growing to be a bit of a monster, but I hope to post the first chapter soon for y'all. :) Spoilers, it's a ridiculous amount of Peter whumpage and team feels. :D *strikes a noble pose* I may only write a few tropes, but goshdurnit, I write a LOT of those tropes because I love them! And I love sharing them with you! And apparently you like them too, so everybody's happy all around. Muwahahaha! ;) 

*turns suddenly serious* Second thing. Um. This is sort of hard to say. But honestly, you guys here have all been so kind and supportive of me, and I've been hiding this pain for a long, long time. And I'm finally mustering up the courage to put this information out here. Honestly, I'm hoping to find the support and love I'm frankly desperate for. *weak attempt at a joke* Hey, look, real life hurt/comfort! *stops even trying to joke* But seriously. Um. here goes.

Er. So, yes. Some of you already know that I have PTSD from a long ago, nearly deadly assault that, not kidding, should have killed me. The jerk who attacked/tried to murder me also attacked (and tried to kill) my best friend in the whole wide world. The worst part is, the entire time he hurt her, I was there, and had to watch him do it. He'd made sure--so sure--that neither of us could do a damn thing to stop him, or even say anything or call for help. I nearly killed myself trying to get help, and he mocked me for it. Encouraged me to try harder, then laughed--and hurt me worse--when I failed. 

It was pretty messed up. On my darkest days, I still blame myself for not being able to stop him from hurting us. 

*tired look* God, was that guy a _jackass_.

Worst thing about it? My best friend and I were toddlers. 

Freaking _toddlers_. Realistically speaking, there was literally nothing I could have done to stop him. But the memories are still there, and still so vivid...so, so _vivid_. Painful, terrifying, and _alive_. They can flare up out of nowhere, and then I'm left wrecked, broken, and hopeless for hours on end, wishing I didn't have a body to remember the trauma with. For those of you who don't know this yet, complex PTSD is....well, just _not fun_. 

Not fun at all. The worst part is there's no joke to make about it--which, tbh, is how I deal with most of the messed up crap I've dealt with since I was tiny. 

This particular trauma is just not funny. It never will be. Not ever. 

Life can be pretty awful, sometimes.

*clears throat roughly* Anyway, all of this came to light fairly recently, and it's been...so hard to deal with. So hard. Each day is a grind. The worst part of it is my own parents don't believe me. The first thing they did when I told them? They _demanded proof of the assault_. 

PROOF. From an assault that happened over FIFTEEN YEARS AGO. And without that proof, they refuse to support me in any meaningful way. I extended a peace offering over Christmas, but they outright refused to even try and talk about it with me or with my doctors. 

And that hurt me. A lot. You might have noticed I haven't posted much since then, or at best erratically. I'm sorry for that, I truly am--but everything felt like too much. Still does, tbh.

Just... it hurts. Everything hurts. So _much._ There are days when I can cope, and days when I go half--or all--crazy with the pain, and the best I can do is curl up into a ball and silently cry until I literally throw up or am utterly exhausted.

*weak smile* Don't worry, I am getting professional help, and have some friends that still support me, so there's hope, but honestly...even with all that...there are just...times when I feel so alone. So horribly, completely, utterly alone. And all light seems to have died from this world. Even stories lose their appeal and I start to doubt whether there is anything like true family, or friends, or laughter, or anything else....ehm...good.

So...*deep, scared breath* I'm asking you, right now, as a friend, as a fellow human being, please, if you're reading this, and able to say something, _anything_, whether it be a heart emoticon or a hug or a friendly saying or quote or piece of advice...or anything positive, please, _please_, for the love of all that is good and true in this world, say it, type it, whatever. 

I'm so scared, and so alone. And so hurt. It hurts, guys. It hurts so freaking much.

But you do help make it better. At least a little bit. 

I love you all. 

*tired Ravager salute*

All my love,  
Rohanrider3

#MeToo


	12. Brief Update

You guys are all so.......just....you're wonderful. Your words mean the world to me. I treasure them and quite honestly there have been times where they were the only thing keeping the metaphorical Power stone from burning me up alive. So thank you, each and every one of you. A lot. *hugs each one of you very hard, sniffling* 

I promise I'll try to respond to each and every one of your comments individually, but figured I should at least shoot out a flare and let you all know I"m alive. *tired, crooked smile* For now, anyway.

Um. So, the good news is, things aren't worse....but the bad news is things aren't great, either.

Argh, all right, fine, they _suck_. But your screens are the closest thing I've got to a flesh and blood support community right now (details down below), so I'm gonna tell ya'll a little bit about what's been going on. And why that hurt!Peter fic might take a long time to materialize. (*miserable face* I'm sorry...)

A very small, very young part of me doesn't want to type this, because saying it makes it horrible and solid and real, but the fact of the matter is that my biological parents have...um. Essentially disowned me. Over the whole sexual abuse thing. (Cuz, you know. It's my fault it happened--if it even did, which it didn't, and I"m crazy and lying and bad for taking steps to improve my mental health.) 

*holds up a tired finger* It gets better. And by better, I mean worse. Because, despite _specific instructions to not speak about my abuse to ANYONE in the family until I decided it was the appropriate time to break the news to my (much younger, dearly loved) siblings...

Well. About forty-eight hours before the big, summer, annual Family Reunion, guess what my biological parents (I can't call them Mom and Dad anymore) did. Yeah. They told everyone. And I mean, _everyone_. Their side of the story, that is. Which goes something like "Well Rohan thinks this happened to her, but she's clearly insane and did we mention disobedient and irreligious and clearly not getting the CORRECT kind of help that WE think she should get even though we're not DOCTORS and THAT'S why she's saying these AWFUL things about OUR relationship." 

So _then_ I had to sit down and pen a carefully-worded email to my _teenage brothers and sisters_ about my side of the story, explaining exactly what complex PTSD is, how bad an attack is, along with bullet points about anxiety attacks and depression, and asking them to please, for the love of God, not bring it up at the reunion the next day. Since our grandmother had been feeling poorly and was NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM ABLE TO HANDLE THIS SORT OF TORMENT RIGHT NOW. 

The next day, my biological parents did what they do best. Repeatedly violated my politely requested boundaries, acted the concerned and caring martyrs, and essentially crushed any glimmerings of self-worth I had up into smaller pieces than Peter's walkman. (Their ego is, quite literally, the sea...)

But. I'll never forget the last time I saw/spoke to them. My best friends in the world had announced that they are expecting a baby! And I get to be the godmother! Which is _fantastic_. Less fantastic was having to watch the obligatory goo-i-ness with the abusive birth parents oohing and ahhhing proudly that they get to be grandparents to a sweet little kid. 

After the hoopla ended and the happy parents/still unborn kid were gone, I pulled both my parents over and, first, quietly congratulated them. Then I let them know, in the same, polite, even voice, that I am the child's godmother, and if there is ever ANY abuse, be it physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, or anything else, I would _end_ it. My father looked like I'd hit him over the head with a house, his expression twisted in utter, 'innocent' disbelief. He asked me to repeat myself. I did, without losing my cool. Then he still didn't get it. Until my mother, her voice low and soulfully distraught, said the exact same words I had just uttered. Well, things just kept rolling from there. My father let out a sound somewhere between a choke and a sob, and swiftly gathered _his wife_ (how he always refers to her) into his arms and _pressed her into his heart_, while sorrowfully looking away from me into the _sunset._

The sunset. There was a fucking _sunset_ backdropping all of this. (To be fair, I looked at the sunset too, but more like a desperately sidelong glance, almost hoping to see some sort of celestial camera crew getting this as a gag reel for "Arrested Development", or something.) 

But they weren't. 

No one was.

And when I told my parents again--asked, _again_, for them to _please_ come to therapy with me, because I _wanted_ to fix my relationship with them, and we could only do it with counseling, I asked, _again_, --I think my voice quivered, it doesn't normally do that--and waited, forever, for an answer. Instead of even looking at me, they turned away. Just, straight up, turned their backs on me.

Well, to do them justice, they dramatically turned away in _silence_, holding each other close for _support_ as they looked into the fucking setting _sun_. 

And you think Ego the Jackass Planet is a dramatic asshole.

I couldn't make up this shit if I _tried._

Anyway. That was the end of that. I think I choked something out like, "Okay...I'll take that as an answer. Uh...have a good one." Then I left as quickly as I could, so as not to make a scene.

Annnnnd then my parents left the reunion early and without warning, dragging most of my younger siblings with them. I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye. Oh, and my youngest sister wouldn't talk to me until she left. She was too busy sighing dramatically and clicking away on her phone to even look at me. She thinks I"m making this stuff up.

But I'm not. 

So the next morning I said "forget this", quickly threw my stuff into my car, and after a hasty goodbye to my grandparents all but quantam-warped away from the reunion-debacle and embarked on a three/four day drive across the country to a new job, new apartment, and new life, almost getting killed in an epically awful windstorm/thunderstorm/hailstorm in the mountains on the way. *gives a two thumps up and a smile that's a little too toothy* FUN. TIMES. 

It's been a few months now, and getting out of that situation has helped, a little. 

But It hurts. Jesus Christ and God Almighty, it still _hurts_. 

It _hurts_ and I'm _scared_ and I'm _alone_. And the CPTSD's come roaring back, stronger than ever. Seems like my biological parents aren't so much triggers as they are freaking burn cubes. 

Every day I wake up and my mind is screaming at me that I'm a worthless, lost, disgusting, cowardly little piece of shit, and I'll never be wanted again, and it's _my_ _fault_ my best friend got hurt too. Every day. And now the news is chock full about talking about people like my abuser (from what I can remember, he was religious), and how people knew this abusive pedophilic shit was going on in the Catholic Church for years--FUCKING DECADES--and no one stopped it. The abusers are in the wind. Everyone's furious but no one has a solution. My biological father is, no surprise, siding with the jackasses on this one. And I just...I just can't. 

I don't even have any faith left to cling to. *breaks* Honestly? I wish my rapist had finished his fucking job and choked me to death when I was five. I wouldn't have to hurt SO MUCH NOW if he had. 

But he didn't. And now, every day--often more than once--I'm left coughing and choking, usually at my desk during the day, which has btw not largely endeared me to my new coworkers. But I can't explain that it's complex PTSD, and they're lucky I'm not curled into a sobbing, delirious mess on the floor, so instead I just weakly laugh at the "I guess you have an alien inside of you" and "We've decided you have a tumor" jokes. Which, to be fair, are actually funny to me. No one's yelled at me or gotten actually mad or anything, if anything it's more like a bunch of sarcastic/but secretly sweet Doctor McCoys/goofy Ravagers trying to get me to visit the hospital so I don't effing die.

I'm so fucking tired, guys. 

I'm so fucking tired. 

I wish I had something positive to say. But all I've got is this rotting emotional wound I that I wrote about up above. 

No, that's not quite right. There are two other things. One. I am not going to leave. I don't want my goddaughter growing up looking at pictures with her mother and me in them, and asking her parents "Where did that person go?". That just, that just isn't going to fucking happen. Not on my watch. I didn't have a choice back then when we were five, but I sure as hell can keep from hurting my best friend now. So, so much for that. 

And two. I don't know how many of you have read the Dresden Files, but there's this part when the main character, a wizard named Harry Dresden, is just--just absolutely whumped out of his mind. He's beaten, starving, wounded, chained in a basement, hanging from his wrists while freezing icy water torrents down over him, and he's been kept like that for the better part of the day, I think, and he's too wounded/prevented from using his magic, and the demon who captured him--a very well-spoken and outwardly civilized man named Nicodemous--comes in and essentially offers him relief from all his suffering, ever. If Harry joins his demon team, he'll have comfort, wealth, power, companionship, everything you can think of. But Harry knows the kinds of things he'd have to do to get that relief, and, well, harming the innocent and spreading pain and fear just really aren't his thing. So every time I just want to roll over and die, I say the same thing Harry does to that dark thing that's twisted his mind into a briar patch of thorns and pain. 

"Fuck off, Nick."

It's not eloquent. But it does the job. 

*buries head in hands* Jesus Christ, so fucking tired. 

Hm. Anyway, I do love you guys. You're the support network I never found growing up. *half smile* It's strange...I always wanted to be connected with people, even if I couldn't see them. Wanted to know that somehow, someone, somewhere give a damn that I existed, even if I didn't get to see them every day. And then Ao3 happened. Guess it's not just for sharing whump recs and fandom happiness. Although it's great for that too ;) 

It's good hearing from you. You help me not roll over and let Ego win. 

'Til next time,

Rohanrider3

#tired Ravager salute  
#MeToo  
#seriously even if you leave a fic rec in the comments I will hug you--I need to get my mind off this mess somehow

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! This is another WIP, so thank you for your patience, and, if you'd be so kind, your comments and positive feedback! They help me SO MUCH and honestly help me keep writing. 
> 
> (Also, some of you have been so kind as to ask what you can do to help me feel better during this rough time....)*shuffles feet a little* 
> 
> Weeeeellll, besides your lovely words, if you know of any fan art already made or are moved to make any fan art for my works, that would be FANTASTIC. I'd probably weep with happiness and dance for joy. ;) 
> 
> Oh! Also, I'm trying out tumblr under the same name, rohanrider3. Come be my friend! :D


End file.
